BATON ROUGE — LSU’s 14th-ranked gymnastics team travels to Fayetteville, Ark., for the first time in program history to take on No. 13 Arkansas Friday night at Barnhill Arena. The meet is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.
LSU (4-3, 0-2 SEC) is coming off a tri-meet victory over Centenary and Texas Woman’s, a meet that saw the Tigers post their second-best team score of the season (196.500). LSU will be looking to earn its first conference win of the year as it suffered early season losses to top-ranked Alabama and No. 6 Florida.
The Tigers will lean on the efforts of sophomore April Burkholder who has paced the LSU squad through the first four meets of the season. Burkholder is currently ranked among the top-10 nationally on both the vault and floor exercise, in addition to being ranked 12th in the all-around.
Arkansas (5-1, 2-1 SEC) is coming off its first loss of the season, having fallen to No. 2 Georgia, 197.300-195.250, a week ago. The Lady’Backs are averaging a team score of 195.869 this season and are ranked among the nation’s top-15 on both the beam and floor exercise.
LSU owns a perfect 2-0 all-time record against Arkansas, a program that’s in just its second year of existence. The Tigers defeated the Lady’Backs twice in 2003, outscoring UA, 196.700-193.475 in Baton Rouge before topping them, 195.650-194.875, at the SEC Championships.
Following the Arkansas meet, LSU will continue its SEC slate, traveling to Athens, Ga., Feb. 13, for a meet with the second-ranked Georgia Bulldogs.